Appellate Panel Hears Scout Case

November 14, 1992|By William Grady, Legal affairs writer

The lawyer for a Hinsdale youth denied membership in the Cub Scouts because his father is an agnostic argued Friday that federal civil-rights law should be read broadly to provide a remedy for all sorts of discrimination.

The thrust of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was ``to obliterate discrimination wherever it occurs,`` said lawyer Richard D. Grossman, in oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago. Grossman is asking the appeals court to overturn a decision in March by then U.S. District Judge Ilana Rovner, who ruled that the Boys Scouts of America was a private organization with a right to exclude from its membership boys who do not believe in God.

The group`s policy was challenged in a federal lawsuit filed by Elliot Welsh, whose son Mark, now 10, was denied membership in the Scouts in 1989.

The West Suburban Council of the Boy Scouts of America returned his application after Welsh noted he could not agree with the requirement that his son recognize an obligation to God.

At issue before the appeals court panel is whether Scouting is a ``public accommodation`` under a federal law that prohibits discrimination by motels, gas stations, movie theaters, sports arenas and other places of entertainment. George Davidson, a lawyer for the Boy Scouts, contended that the civil-rights legislation in question was narrowly written and that the group was not a ``place`` under the law.

Davidson argued that if the Boy Scouts cannot limit membership to those who believe in God, then other private, not-for-profit groups such as the NAACP or the Sons of Norway could not put limits on whom they serve.

At a trial in 1991, leaders of some religious organizations testified that they would be forced to withdraw their sponsorship of Cub Scouts if the religious requirement was dropped. On the other hand, Boy Scout councils have been threatened with a loss of funding over Scouting`s anti-atheist and anti- homosexual policies.